The Church of England and closer union with Methodists
This week, the Church of England'southward General Synod volition contend something controversial other than sexuality (hurrah!): whether we should take a formal footstep towards closer marriage with the Methodist Church by means of common recognition of our corresponding presbyteral (local church leader) ministries. The proposals are set out in the written report Ministry and Mission in Covenant from the Faith and Club Commission (FAOC) in the C of E and its analogue in the Methodist Church—and I confess to being pleasantly surprised by the clarity, coherence and persuasiveness of the case that it sets out, exploring in turn the historical context of the debate, the question of episcopal ministry, the significant of ministry recognition, and the legislative requirements. For me, the nub of the consequence (which has been the focus of much subsequent debate) is expressed in chapter two, in the paragraphs expressing the theological significance of Episcopal ministry. These paragraphs set out a number of important observations about the nature and understanding of episcopal ministry in the Church building of England.
The comments firstly recognise the importance of episcopacy in the Church of England, and its nature:
It is worth noting 3 characteristics of the celebrated episcopate as understood past Anglicans. First, it is personal: 'The historic episcopate is a particular expression of personal episkope. There is no substitute for person-to-person pastoral ministry – with all its risks and vulnerability'.xi Second, information technology is historic: 'It is an expression of the visible historical continuity of the Church today with the Church of the apostles', even though 'it is not dependent on a hypothetical unbroken chain of hands on heads'.12 Third, it is received. The historic episcopate cannot be created de novo; a church cannot but bring information technology into existence past and for itself, although information technology may have different expressions in different contexts. All our churches are debtors to the wider Church, the Church building cosmic, and our highest aspiration is simply 'to do what the Church building does', not 'our own matter'.13 (para 23)
Only the report so goes on to note what might exist called the provisionality of this vision—it does not (in contrast to Roman Catholic understandings) claim to be unique or defining of Christian ecclesiology:
Anglican ecumenical documents have repeatedly emphasised that the historic episcopate is not essential to being a true church building.14 And so why, then, is information technology necessary for the Methodist Church to receive it equally an integral part of the framework that enables the interchangeability of presbyteral ministries with the Church of England? The respond is to be found in the ecumenical strategy of the Anglican Communion as this was articulated in the Lambeth Quadrilateral in 1888. E'er since, Anglicans have consistently maintained that establishing a human relationship of communion with other churches rests on the presence of four elements: the Scriptures, the historic creeds, the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper, and the historic episcopate 'locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples chosen of God into the Unity of His Church'.xv (para 24)
There then comes a rather important observation, which is made from the Methodist side of the discussion, only really sheds further low-cal on historic Anglican convictions:
The Methodist Church, in its formal statement on the nature of the Church, Called to Love and Praise (1999), accepts the ecumenical consensus in the landmark Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (WCC, 1982) that the historic episcopate is 'a sign, though non a guarantee, of the continuity and unity of the Church building'.20 At the same time, the Methodist Church building does not accept that the celebrated episcopate is essential for the faithful exercise of ministry.21 (para 27)
I retrieve this is absolutely crucial. Episcopacy points to the centrality of apostolic faith in the Church. But as an administrative structure, it cannot guarantee this—and it would non exist hard to find examples to demonstrate this. We practise not have an instrumentalist understanding of the sacraments, nor of ministry; both are signs of spiritual reality, but neither guarantee it unconditionally (and in the Church of England ordination is not a dominical sacrament). What matters is the affair that it points to—it is but a ways (even if an important one) to this end of being part of 'ane, holy, catholic andapostolic' church, and the written report cites the ecumenical studyBaptism, Eucharist and Ministry in its understanding of apostolicity:
Continuity in the permanent characteristics of the Church of the apostles: witness to the churchly faith, proclamation and fresh interpretation of the gospel, celebration of baptism and the eucharist, the manual of ministerial responsibility, communion in prayer, love, joy, and suffering, service to the sick and needy, unity amid the local churches and sharing the gifts which the Lord has given to each.
It is this continuity which is the essence of the Church building; the particular expression of personal episcopacy in the Church building of England can part as an important means to this stop, but is not in itself theological essential (though we might debate that it is its celebrated distinctive in comparison with another denominations). It seems to me that this understanding coheres with the accent in the New Testament on the (corporate) ministry of the apostles (note the emphasis on continuity of witness in Acts 1.22 and elsewhere) to manus on theparadosis, the witnessing tradition of Jesus' teaching, death and resurrection in 1 Cor 15.three ('what I received I passed on to yous…'). The whole arroyo accords with the way the Book of Mutual Prayer introduces the Ordinal (on p 553), as a historical reality, but without any reference to theological necessity of this particular pattern. Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of Church History in Oxford, makes exactly these points:
First, 'the historic episcopate' throughout the Christian world is a pragmatic, gradual creation of the second century CE, which links with the first apostles, but does not do then exclusively. In that location was no single bishop of Rome, for example, until the 2nd century, and earlier lines of single succession there are chivalrous fictions.
Second, the Church of England is a Church building of the Reformation which just happened to go along bishops. Information technology is actually a 'Reformed' Protestant Church, that is not Lutheran, but role of a family of European Churches, some of which kept bishops in their authorities, some not. Then national Reformed Churches in England, Ireland, Republic of hungary, Romania and Poland have bishops. Up to 1662, clergy from other Reformed Churches served regardless in the CofE when they came here: often they were placed in English cathedrals or universities, non to quarantine them in some way but simply because they didn't speak much English, and there they could practise a ministry in the learned language of Latin.
Steven Croft's advancement of the proposals in last week's Church Times focussed on the pragmatic, rather than the theological. He notes both the historical connectedness and the current question about 'fresh expressions of church'. By contrast, Andrew Davison'due south response is robustly theological in focus:
Our Church upholds ancient Catholic order: bishops in the historic episcopate are the ministers of ordination; the eucharist is celebrated by them, and by the priests they ordain. This is central to what makes the Church of England Catholic as well as reformed: not belongments, nor genuflection, but guild.
I very much respect Andrew, both personally and as a theologian, simply I think he is seriously mistaken here. The Church of England is non 'Catholic as well as reformed', every bit if these are two strands in its identity; it is Reformed Cosmic, expressing the faith that has been agreed in all places, but at every point scrutinised through the lens of the apostolic faith as set out in the Scriptures. And the Church is not 'made' by its 'order': it is constituted as the community of witness to the resurrection, true-blue to the churchly teaching about Jesus and breathed in to life by the Spirit of God. A particular ordering of the Church might enable this, and be historically common, but equally MacCulloch points out, this has not been universal exercise in other reformed Cosmic Churches.
Richard Peers offers a critique of Davison's approach from a more Catholic perspective on his blog. He brings to bear (without completely agreeing with) my before critique of some of the language of 'priest' as used in the Church of England, but locates his main argument in a properly theological agreement of sacraments and ministry building.
It seems to me that discussion of 'validity' and 'sacramental assurance' are extremely unhelpful. We must be careful to avoid magical thinking about the sacraments. Such thinking leads to episcopi vagantes with plainly valid orders. Simply no Church. Just equally at that place is, for Christians, just one priest, Jesus, and then in that location is but 1 sacrament, his sacrifice on the Cantankerous. Baptism is the 'Ur'-sacrament past which we participate in that sacrifice, Eucharist is the making present of that sacrifice and our participation in information technology through time and infinite. The other sacraments, likewise, are extensions of that sacrament.
The church building (and the sacraments, therefore) are to some extent present in every baptised person. The sacrament of lodge is present in every Christian community as it orders its life for leadership and mission, and for Eucharist. The fullness, the Catholicity, of the Church building is undivided, it is every baptised person in every time and place.
Andrew Davison responded to Richard Peers' critique, but largely to reiterate the points he has made previously; I don't think I saw an engagement with the theological question of why 'order' in itself should be given this constitutive importance, not least in the language of the BCP and subsequent Anglican statements. The strength of Richard's arguments is shown by the weakness of some of the responses; also on Richard's blog comes a piece past Dr Philip Murray, an ordinand at Westcott House.
While I'g grateful that Fr Richard does dive deeper into the theological problems raised by the report, I'thou afraid I cannot hold with some of his conclusions. Surely Catholic Anglicans practice believe that a priest, a presbyteros, in the Church of England is of the same type of priesthood that Roman Catholics (and Orthodox) profess — one that is quite distinct from more than Protestant understandings of presbyteral ministry argued for by Ian Paul (cautiously cited by Fr Richard) and which, arguably, accept greater similarities with Methodist understandings of that ministry.
I call back that statement is extraordinary, and can only be made by ignoring both the theology and the historical context of the Prayer Volume, the ongoing debates in the Church building of England, both in ecumenical discussion and in the revision of Communion liturgy. It comes nether the kind of ecclesial 'wishful thinking' that is given short shrift by some other church historian, Alec Ryrie, as Peter Webster notes:
Might that unity exist plant by means to a recourse to a shared history? The editors rightly place a fine essay by Alec Ryrie at the very showtime, in which many of the misreadings of the sixteenth century history of the Church of England are neatly dissected. The formation of 'Anglicanism', equally a distinctive prepare of attitudes and theological methods, dates from a hundred years later on the foundation of the Church of England, in which process figures such as Richard Hooker – marginal in his mean solar day – were moved to the centre, and figures such equally William Perkins or Thomas Cartwright were marginalised despite being highly influential at the time. (That some readers may demand to await these two figures up is an indication of how occluded they accept go; neither appears anywhere else in this book, and Perkins is re-christened Thomas in the index). Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics have disagreed profoundly over the early years of the Church building of England, which makes the entreatment to a normative past a problematic 1 to make.
Take for instance the consequence of episcopacy. Ryrie again shows that although the Church of England was founded every bit an episcopal church, views differed widely equally to the precise importance of the fact. Was episcopacy of the essence of the church, without which it could non be (the position which several Anglo-Catholics have taken)? It was this principle that derailed the single most significant ecumenical scheme of the twentieth century in England, to reunify Anglicans and Methodists. Or, was episcopacy only a convenient model of organization, symbolically useful fifty-fifty, just something without which under different circumstances the Church might live? Chapters from Mark Chapman on missionary bishops, Kevin Ward on mission and Robert Bruce Mullin on the church building in colonial America all bear witness that, equally a matter of historical fact, Anglicans have at times managed quite well without a fully fledged episcopal system. But other chapters make what is a common rhetorical slide from the historical to the normative, in this as in other matters. To paraphrase: 'many Anglicans in the past have done some particular thing, and I (for reasons of theology) think that was right; these others who at present do not practise this are therefore not fully Anglican.'
The difference in perspective hither (between Anglo-Catholic theological construction and historical reality) is expressed rather nicely in comments on Facebook in the terminal calendar week, in response to people posting Diarmaid MacCulloch's assessment. Adrian Furse, an Anglo-Catholic, responds:
I don't object to reconciliation, merely I practise demand that each and every Methodist minister is episcopally ordained before serving in an Anglican Church building.
whilst John Barton, some other Oxford professor, observes:
Hear, hear [to MacCulloch]. I remember the 1960s Anglican-Methodist scheme, which failed because of the same unhistorical fantasy about Anglican orders. I expect the same to happen again, alas.
For all these reasons, I will exist voting in favour of the proposals gear up out in Ministry and Mission in Covenant. But I would want to add together a couple of caveats. Steven Croft opens his piece with the exclamation:
Any opportunity to have a significant step towards visible Christian unity needs to be grasped with both easily and explored fully.
I but want to ask the question: 'Why'? In these discussions, 'visible' has get a slippery term, and is usually taken to mean 'institutional'. I am non clear that institutional, authoritative and authoritative spousal relationship is all that important. After all, the ekklesiai in the diverse cities in the early church operated much more as a loose confederation—only gathered effectually the churchly witness. It is also worth noting that they had no kind of monarchical episcopacy—so that, ironically, the Methodist understanding of collective oversight actually takes us more closely to the apostolic era. And is not practical partnership in ministry building and mission on the ground non 'visible'? More than chiefly, what is the relation between unity and truth? As I have previously argued, it is a error to read Jesus' then-called 'high priestly prayer' in John 17 as a eulogy to unity; Jesus is quite articulate that unity is found by means of our agreeing on the apostolic message that he has entrusted to his followers and which we observe in the gospels and letters of the New Attestation.
I am also curious equally to why this detail question has come back to u.s.a. at a time when the Church of England still has not stemmed its decline, and when (arguably) Methodism is, tragically, in its dying days. If unity is so important, why are we not putting similar efforts into attaining 'visible unity' with the many 'new churches' which are growing, and from whom we are borrowing many of our strategies of church building planting and growth?
(I take borrowed the picture from the Church Times, but I promise they will permit this equally I am encouraging people to read their articles…)
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